Steve Jobs, the innovative force behind Apple, grew up in San Francisco but traced his roots back to Syria. It was a fact that many Syrians celebrated on Thursday even as they mourned his death and lamented how the political crisis gripping the country made it unlikely that a future Steve Jobs would emerge from Syria and stay there.

Ahmed, a 28-year-old in Damascus, told Reuters that he was happy to learn of Mr. Jobs’s Syrian background, but added: “I think that if he had lived in Syria he would not have been able to achieve any of this, or else he would have chosen to leave Syria.”

Many others voiced their feelings of pride at the connection to Mr. Jobs and resentment at the current situation in the country in postings on Twitter:

A headline on the New York-based International Business Times captured a sentiment that may have struck many American fans of Apple as unfamiliar: “Steve Jobs Dies: He Was The Most Famous Arab in the World.”

Many people in America and around the world are mourning the death of Stephen Jobs from Apple. By all accounts, Stephen Jobs was a brilliant innovator and businessman. Not so many know that Stephen Jobs’ biological father was born in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, and studied at the American University in Beirut.

Like all great leaders and innovators Jobs never let himself be poured into a mold. Rest in peace, Stephen Jobs, grandson of Homs.

The city of Homs has been a hotbed of antigovernment protests against the president, Bashar al-Assad.

Mr. Jobs’s biological father, Abdulfattah Jandali, was a graduate student from Homs when he met Mr. Jobs’s biological mother, Joanne Carole Schieble, while studying in Wisconsin in the 1950s, according to a translation of an interview with Mr. Jandali in the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat.

In his interview with Al-Hayat, published earlier this year, Mr. Jandali said he had given Mr. Jobs up for adoption because Ms. Schieble’s father “was extremely conservative and wouldn’t let her marry me, and she decided to give him up for adoption.”

He went on:

I think that if my son Steve had been brought up with a Syrian name he would have achieved the same success. He has a brilliant mind. And he didn’t finish his university studies. That’s why I think he would have succeeded whatever his background. I don’t have a close relationship with him. I send him a message on his birthday, but neither of us has made overtures to come closer to the other. I tend to think that if he wants to spend time with me he knows where I am and how to get hold of me.

He added:

People know that he has Syrian origins and that his father is Syrian, that’s all well known. But he doesn’t pay attention to these things. He has his own distinctive personality and he’s highly strung. People who are geniuses can do what they want

Mr. Jandali, now 80, is a former professor of political science and currently an executive at a casino in Reno, Nevada, where he lives. RazorianFly.com, an Apple-watching site, published a recent photograph in August.

In an interview with the New York Post less than two months ago, Mr. Jandali said that neither he nor his son had been willing to communicate. “This might sound strange, though, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbeds, to pick up the phone to call him,” Mr. Jandali said. “Steve will have to do that, as the Syrian pride in me does not want him ever to think I am after his fortune.”

He lamented in the interview that he would likely not see his son again before he died and said that giving him up had not been his decision. “I honestly do not know to this day if Steve is aware of the fact that had it been my choice, I would have loved to have kept him,” he said.

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